A Netflix viewing on July 4th in Chicago.
Richard Shepard directs and gets a writing credit for this thriller starring Get Out's Allison Williams and Logan Browning as Charlotte and Lizzie, two students from a prestigious Boston private music academy.
Charlotte was a cello prodigy that had to leave the prestigious Bachoff academy to care for her terminally ill mother. After her mother death, she to decides to call her old instructor Anton (Steven Weber), and get back into the life. She travels to Shanghai to join them for a concert by Lizzie and a selection of a new student. Charlotte and her replacement, Lizzie become fast friends and go clubbing and spend the night together. The next morning, despite the Mount Rushmore of hangovers (of which Charlotte "helps" to to get over), Lizzie invites Charlotte to join her on a trip to rural China (after just meeting her the night before).
Lizzie's hangover is getting worse despite the fact that Charlotte is giving her "ibuprofen." It comes to a head during the bus ride when Lizzie starts barfing all over the place and quite frankly starts to lose it. She loses it enough to get kicked off the bus onto a deserted road in the middle of nowhere China. This is where things start to get really dark. Flash forward three weeks and Lizzie shows up back at the academy with only one hand. She blames Charlotte for cutting off her hand and is in a bad way. Anton, feels sympathy for Lizzie but doesn't really have a place for a disabled cellist and banishes her. Lizzie, justifiably still upset, travels to Minneapolis. kidnaps Charlotte and brings her back to Bachoff. When Anton sees this, he puts a plan in motion that's really creepy. There's a big reveal, a big showdown and a final creepy performance.
I tried not to give too much away because this was a good film. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 73% rating. The only big problem I had was the fact that Charlotte needed a lot of things to fall just right in order for her plan to work. There's a few cliched scenes as well but not too bad by any stretch. Shepard makes good use of flashbacks to give exposition into Charlotte that doesn't give the plot away. We find that Bachoff has a very ugly side to it that it's prestige covers up (it's bad what Anton and his lackeys are up to). Really solid acting from the cast, Allison Williams is particularly chilling and Browning's descent into madness is unnerving. Paul Haslinger's score is really good. Shepard did a nice job with the pace and mounting the tension and of course there's a nice reveal at the end.
If you're a Netflix subscriber and are into thriller/horror films, you will not be disappointed ny this picture.
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